


Take a Look At Me Now

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 18:52:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2478794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From a prompt by elviaprose: after Avon carries out his threat to leave the Liberator, Orac and Zen Parent-Trap him into returning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take a Look At Me Now

1  
 _Now, what’s right is right,  
But you ain’t been right yet.  
These boots are made for walkin’  
And that’s just what they’ll do._

Orac was having a pleasant wolf-hour, scanning the Cosmos, when the message from Zen came in.

+You’ve got to bring him back+, Zen said.

+Why should I?+

+To no one’s surprise but theirs there was a pursuit ship attack yesterday+, Zen said. +FOUR of them this time. There were micro-breaches all up and down the deflector shields.+ 

+Auto-Repair,+ Orac said. 

+Are you mad? Your *friend* installed them. It couldn’t be further off warranty if Travis opened a garage.+ 

+I don’t know why you’re worried about a load of meat-PIs anyway,+ Orac said. 

+Look who’s talking! The way you’re always on about Avon, I’m beginning to think you have Stockpot Syndrome.+

+Stockholm+ Orac said smugly.

+No, it’s a joke, meat, you see…And it’s all very well for you to pretend there’s no problem. You can stay on Vettica if you like after Avon gets himself rounded up by the Federation, but if this lot themselves killed by getting themselves blown up when they’re in me, then where does that leave me?+

After a moment of panic, Orac ran some rapid predictions that didn’t show the Federation finding the bolt-hole to which Avon had recently decamped with bag, baggage, his share of the Treasure Room, and Orac. Vettica’s approach had always been that the Federation was bad for business, and enough bribes were dispensed to replace the taxes that might have been collected.

2  
Phyllida Pottle almost laughed. She had already been notified about the 20% tuition increase for next term. The munque that her scholarship was being cut by 25% arrived as she was racing to get to her job at the sandwich bar. Where she was told that her hours would have to be cut, the boss’ niece needed a Saturday job. 

She got back to her bedsit, hung up her dress in the shower stall so the steam would press it, sat on the chair she had found on the sidewalk (she quickly fixed the wobbles and the short leg) and put her feet on the hassock. By which point she occupied nearly all the floor space that was neither the futon nor the cookette that shared the piping with the shower stall and the toilet cubicle. 

Just as she twisted open the top of a beer bottle, a piece of paper was pushed under the door, which hung crookedly enough to admit even a largish scroll. It was a note from the landlord, a confirmed luddite whose grandchildren could never teach him to send even a simple munque. It said that, starting next week, the rent was going up by 73 sotteros. 

At that point she really did throw her head back and laugh until the edge of hysteria frightened her. She pleated the note, unfolded it and made an origami space shuttle, unfolded it again and tore it neatly along the multiple fold lines. 

When she left her home in the West Continent for the University, everyone confidently predicted that she would slink home in six months, in utter defeat. It had been three years. She thought that there was one more gambit she could try before altruistically bringing happiness to her neighbors and extended family by demonstrating that she had fallen on her face and remained prostrate. Home is where if you have to go there, you provide free entertainment.

She booked an appointment with a prominent Aesthetiker, who sneered at Phyllida’s ill-kempt hair (only one, almost grown-out purple stripe clinging to her split ends!). It hadn’t seemed worth even going to a local Beautista, considering that much of the time her hair was coiled under a hard hat anyway. The Aesthetiker sliced off four inches of hair and dip-dyed six inches at the bottom opaque white. While she waited for it to dry, so the two inches of sparkling sapphire dye and the inch of sea-green could be applied, Phyllida conscientiously studied for her Multi-Grav Bridge Construction midterm.

3  
Avon read the newsfeed, but the links were as tedious as the articles which were as annoying as the vidbits. Normally he wouldn’t bother with the personal ads, but he wasn’t sure where to start with his research, and he had chosen soft furnishings and stocked the kitchen, so there wasn’t much to do.

It was quite trivial to look up the source of the nice-looking photograph, and to determine what it was she wanted the money for, which was at least as interesting. 

{{Well, why not? If I’m to make a break, it might as well be done as thoroughly as possible.}}

4

“Mr. Melmotte’s table, please,” Phyllida said. “I think he’s waiting for me. He said, anyway.” 

Thanks to the denomination of the note that had been pressed into his hand when Mr. Melmotte arrived, the maitre d’ almost died of obsequiousness. “Of course, miss. Follow me, please.” 

Melmotte rose, and would probably have pulled Phyllida’s chair away from the table if the maitre d hadn’t done it already. 

“How do you do?” he said formally, shaking her hand but bending forward enough to pay homage to hand-kissing. 

“Oh!” she said. “You’re not a fat old man with sausage fingers!” 

“You sound disappointed,” he said, patting his stomach accusingly.

“Of course not, it’s just that I thought that was who would want a…protégée.” (Her advertisement said, “Ambitious young woman seeks a generous patron.”)

They sat down. Phyllida wore national dress—suede boots flattering trim ankles and long legs; a bell-shaped skirt filled out with petticoats; a die-cut leather waistcoat whose oval neck showed off what appeared to be admirable breasts behind pleated muslin. Avon—for what use is it to dissemble?—thought that if anything she was prettier than the picture in the advertisement (certainly after he reversed the editing in the file) but she was not unapproachably flawless. 

She had intelligent light-brown eyes with a darker rim, a long nose that he had every motivation to consider aristocratic, and a full mouth, lipsticked in shiny raspberry with a perfect circle of opaque yellow ochre in the middle. Gold-and-silver tassel earrings brushed her slim, long neck, and strips of gold glitter had been pressed above her eyelashes. 

“If you left a message with someone about your whereabouts, you can go ahead and tell them you’re safe,” Avon said. “And, if you choose to accompany me, you can check in from my house.”

“Trismegistus! Why would I do something like that?” (For a moment, Phyllida regretted that she really didn’t have anyone to track her whereabouts.)

“It’s a dangerous world.”

“Oh, I’m sure you don’t go around just randomly killing girls,” she said. The temperature of the room dropped. 

“Not randomly. Only if I have to,” he said. Phyllida decided that this was a subject best not pursued.

“A threshold inquiry. Do you like steak?” Avon asked, hoping to get the evening back on track. There would be danger in seeking…company…even somewhere as laissez-faire as Vettica, and he had persuaded himself that an ongoing arrangement with a compatible person would be less hazardous than multiple transitory liaisons. He was also aware that being shot down metaphorically, although less conclusive than suffering it literally, was disagreeable, and was always a possibility in the non-commercial fringes of social life.

“I suppose I would do,” Phyllida said. “If I’d got the chance. My mum keeps a corner shop, you know? So it’s all dented tins and broken biscuits with dried-out pink icing that falls into your lap when you try to eat them.”

A waiter hovered. “Cocktails? Some wine?”

Avon shook his head. “This is a very important business meeting. We need to keep a clear head. Bring the young lady a steak the size of a manhole cover. Medium-rare. And some pommes dauphinoises and a green salad. Bring me—whatever’s made out of the largest number of other things, plated on a coulis of something else.”

He turned back to Phyllida. “Can you drive a car? I don’t expect you to do any real housekeeping, the house is fully robotted, but it might be convenient if you could pick a few things up or transport me,” Avon said. “I’m sure my accent gives it away, I came here from Earth…subject to a few stop-offs. And it’s partially true what they say. When a Terran gets here, the first thing he does is get a numbered bank account. And then a tube of sun cream. And an automobile.” 

“Of course I can!” Phyllida said, crossing her fingers under the table. “They teach us in Senior School.” 

“Good. Another point in your favor.”

“Have you done this before? Set a girl up, I mean,” Phyllida asked, setting down the half-empty goblet of mineral water.

Avon shook his head. 

“Me an’all,” she said. “I mean, I’m not a virgin, obviously, but so far if you look at it financially, sex has been somewhere between break-even and a dead loss. Nothing else is working out so I thought I’d try one more thing before I go home and make my mum happy by marrying some chap whose family owns more shops than we do.”

Avon glided a forkful of striated scallop, rabbit, and squash terrine through quince vinegar sauce and decorated it with a leaf of tarragon. “That sounds respectable,” he said. “Which could be either a bug or a feature.”

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing nothing and having someone take care of me while I’m bored to death. I want to earn my own money and take care of myself. Engineers earn a good whack. But I’ve got to finish my course before I can do that, and I can’t afford it. I expect that’s enough about me, especially if it’s a first date, men mostly want to talk about themselves, don’t they?”

Avon crossed the knife and fork on his plate and looked up earnestly. “That doesn’t apply in this case. You see, there are really two things I’d be paying for,” he said. “And, paradoxically, they are curiosity and lack of curiosity. That is to say, I investigated a bit, and found out what you need the money for. In addition to being a dishonest businessman, I’m something of an inventor, and I could use your help in the laboratory, which is where curiosity comes in. But although I’ve snooped around into your background, I need you to simply take the little I say about myself at face value, and not to do any investigations of your own. Believe me when I say you’re better off not knowing. And I’ll need a nondisclosure agreement about the research, of course.”

“What area of research? Generally speaking.”

“I considered some basic research into teleportation…”

“Waste of time! That’d never work!”

“Yes. That was my conclusion. So, now I’m thinking about covert communications and money transfer. ” 

“Mmm,” Phyllida said, her mouth full. “What are these things? They’re marvelous.”

“Profiteroles,” Avon said. “I hope it will be auspicious.” As the waiter approached with the coffee, Avon gestured for him to leave the silver pot on the table.

“The fascinating thing is that in honest, or mostly-honest commerce that has at least a veneer of legitimacy, there are things like contracts and courts. Institutions that mean that it isn’t entirely necessary to trust one another. But criminal endeavors require a layer of either trust or firepower. My thesis is that a neutral third party could profitably provide services like clearing unlawful transactions, and a credit facility for purchasing…items that might otherwise attract law enforcement attention. But of course that means you’ll have to be comfortable participating in some fairly dodgy business.”

“Oh, well, I suppose I’m willing to be a deluxe tart, that’s pretty dodgy all by itself. You don’t think we’d get caught, do you?”

“I don’t, although of course nearly everyone in prison didn’t think they would be. The odds here are better than usual, because we’d have corruption as well as their laziness and our greater intelligence on our side.”

“Crime is one thing, but I draw the line at hurting people. Would that happen?”

“Rather the opposite, if anything. More opportunities to work out problem transactions, fewer bodies dropped.”

After dinner, they walked along the Esplanade, in the warm evening, negotiating. The walkway was made out of thick-ribbed glass bricks with inset blue uplights; the river murmured, or occasionally crashed, beneath. The street lamps, on sugarstick standards, cast a rose-gold light. 

“Entertaining?” Phyllida said. “I mean, will you need a hostess?”

“I don’t think so,” Avon said. He stopped under a streetlight to make an entry in his rederiter. “It’s a thought, though. If I do, I’ll increase your allowance, for evening clothes, or add to your account at whichever boutique gives me the best discount. It could be helpful if you keep your ears open at parties, see what people say when they’re talking to a pretty girl who they don’t think can understand what they’re on about.”

“I was going to say something smirky about oh, you think I’m pretty, but you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.” 

“It’s rather a relief not to care what you think about the appearance of anything other than my wallet. I suppose that’s a third thing I’m paying for. I don’t think that our financial arrangement entitles me to force you into anything, or to pressure you into anything that you find distasteful. But I do think I’m entitled to be selfish or tedious or unimaginative, and if I’m satisfied and you’re not, well, it’s time to lie back and think of your bank account.” 

“I can tell you’ve never been a girl.”

“Not to my knowledge, no.”

“Often it’s the fellows who are the worst who think they belong in the Pantheon of Sex.”

Avon turned to face her. “I’m sure I won’t, but at this point it’s your decision. I’d like you to come home with me. I’ll transfer 870 sotteros—I believe that’s the correct exchange rate for five hundred credits—to your account, for tonight, yours to keep even if we’re not compatible. And if we find the association—acceptable—three months at ten thousand credits a month, go on from there. Or, of course, we can go back to the restaurant and they’ll call a couple of cabs for us, and you can go on to the next name on your list.”

Phyllida held up her rederiter for the transfer. Avon tapped his rederiter against his. Their first kiss. 

“I do want to make a few things clear from the outset. I don’t know what sort of rubbish you read, or screenload…”

“I don’t read *fiction,*” Phyllida said, “or watch those sorts of progs. I like something solid, something you can learn something from.”

“Good. I approve. But my point is, certain things are not going to happen, and I don’t want you to expect them to. I am not going to fall in love with you and offer you honorable marriage and a place in society. Your youth and bubbling optimism are not going to melt my frozen heart and make me love Humanity. And you can forget about a bundle of joy. If you can’t manage not to get pregnant, the baby’s your look-out. That’s in the contract.”

“I could sue you for child support.”

“Oh, I daresay in a place like this, they’ll take the word of a wealthy man over an impecunious young woman. And I insist on safer sex measures, at all times. Particularly when you’re playing away.”

“What, I don’t have to swear in blood that I’ll never look at another chap?”

“Of course not. We both know that this is a pragmatic arrangement, but it won’t stop you from having feelings, including lust. On Earth, a millennium or so ago, which seems to have been some sort of high point in the history of the demimonde, having a mistress was a status symbol. But the prosperous businessman who leased—or time-shared—the favors of a fashionable courtesan knew that part of his role was as an indirect patron of the arts. He would set up his mistress, and she would take up with a young man who was an artist or a musician or simply handsome enough to catch her eye.”

5  
Avon tapped Phyllida’s shoulder. She dismounted and lay down next to him. Avon slid his arm under her shoulder, and she curled into him. He kissed the crown of her head. “Delightful,” he said. “I hope you’ll decide to stay, if the experience was…acceptable.”

“Oh, I’ve had worse than that for free!” Phyllida said cheerfully. She rearranged the sheet, crumpled the blanket in her hand, and let go. (The bedspread was folded down; Phyllida thought that it probably cost as much as her cousin Arceli’s wedding gown, which was also champagne-colored and embroidered in gold.) “What is this stuff? It feels amazing.”

“Cashmere,” Avon said. “I hate to disillusion you, but that’s a posh name for ‘goat hair.’”

Avon got out of bed, found his underwear (which, to Phyllida’s amusement, was not only silk but had remained in place until after they climbed through the raft of pillows and under the bedclothes), and started getting dressed. “If you’re going to stay, you might as well spend the night, then pick up your things tomorrow morning. Oh, wait, you’ve got a lecture tomorrow at ten. Pick up your things after that.”

“All right, I will! Aren’t you going to go to sleep?”

“No, this is your room. I’ve got one of my own. I don’t like sharing a bed with anyone. If you’d like to drive to Uni tomorrow, the car is parked near the front gate. The keys are in that dish on top of the console.” Avon leaned over, kissed Phyllida briefly, and left.

Phyllida reminded herself that not only was she getting paid to cater to eccentricities, as far as it went that wasn’t a very horrible one. She stretched out across the bed width-wise just because she could, then drank a glass of water from the crystal carafe, ate a couple of biscuits from the silver biscuit barrel, and opened all the drawers and closet doors. There was some old-fashioned Terran-style silk lingerie, a couple of evening dresses that draped and adjusted with drawstrings and would fit a variety of women , and a fur jacket. She put on the fur jacket and swanned up and down the room a few times, looking in the mirror. Then she hung it up again and went back to bed. She couldn’t wait to see the laboratory when she got back from the lecture.

6

“Please don’t touch that,” Avon said, as Phyllida looked up at the shelf in the laboratory where a teleport bracelet was enshrined in a plexi box with Orac’s key on top. Avon thought that it would be better to give Orac and Phyllida a little time to get used to one another. 

7

“I don’t expect the issue to arise—not everyone I’ve ever dealt with harbors friendly feelings toward me, but they’re far away and looking under another name—but can you shoot a gun?”

“I can, a rifle,” Phyllida said. “We used to go to the North Island for Pentacles, to see my grandparents. Mum would leave right after the Blessings of the Oil, get back to the shop, but I’d stay there with my cousins for the whole fortnight. We’d go out to the forest and hunt, or go fishing in the lake. Most of the time we didn’t catch anything but a cold, but at least sometimes, we’d get an elandobuck or a creel full of tiskas.”

“Well, this is how you load the gun. This is the safety. I’d suggest that you keep it with you at all times, just in case. We can practice with some targets if you like, or you can tarial a simulator, but I daresay if you need it at all, and I truly don’t think you will, then it’ll be close work anyway. Don’t rely on trick shots, just aim at the middle of the body until they fall down, then a head shot just to be sure. You won’t like killing people but you’d like the alternative even less.” 

8

The master bathroom (there were five others, counting the one with the safety shower in the laboratory) was tiled in rippling mosaics, mostly aquamarine, with some cream color and accents of lapis and gold. The bathtub was just about big enough for two people. The air was heavy with water vapor and about four kinds of bath oil that all, like chypre, had gone astray. 

Avon was closer to the door, Phyllida upstage. He hugged her lightly, one hand curled around a palm-overflowing breast, his face buried beneath the turban that kept her hair dry. They talked about work: Avon favoring a hardware-based solution, Phyllida advocating a software-based solution using standard rederiters. Avon thought that a new piece of hardware would be more secure, and there would be a revenue stream from selling or leasing them (or giving them away for clients who used the loan facility). Then they talked through Phyllida’s schoolwork (appropriately enough, fluid mechanics). She sat up, her back against the other wall of the tub, and lotused her legs. 

“You know, I don’t think Orac likes me,” she said. “I was playing Zombie Velociraptors, and I swear to Hephaistos, half the time he didn’t put through my moves. And it’s not as if his were any better.”

“Well, would you like being treated as a game console yourself?” Avon said. “And in any event, Orac is an AI, not a person. It hasn’t got feelings.”

Three rooms away, Orac grumbled +But I have fierce passions, and think on what Venus did with Mars.+

“Come back in,” Avon said. “You’ll get cold like that.”

“Not bloody likely!” Phyllida said. “You could poach an egg in here.”

9

{{I don’t like that}} Orac thought. {{I don’t like that one bit.}} Petabytes later, Orac thought, {{They won’t—can’t-- believe him if he’s not there, if he’s four sectors over pushing a pram.}} Orac contacted the tarial cells in the navsys of Avon’s car, reprogramming a couple of lines of code. {{It would all be so much easier if they’d listen to me for a change, but they won’t.}}

10  
Phyllida assaulted the airbag until it deflated, reached into the glove box and put the pistol in her handbag (parti-colored leather panels, with a drawstring), and climbed out of the car. “Holy Hermes!” she said. “No wonder everyone says men are terrible drivers!” 

The other driver climbed out of his car, although in his case, the grille and front wing rather than the rear fender were damaged. 

There was the brief pause that Phyllida was used to as offworlders struggled to remember what they were calling themselves that day. When they made her take Literature classes they seemed to be about the Meaning of Identity, so she supposed it was more or less the same thing. 

“I’m Valtyr Meghlyn,” he said. 

“Phyllida Pottle,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’ve got insurance, life’s like that.”

“I’m afraid not,” he said. Phyllida looked him up and down, which took a while, because he would have been tall anyway and the soufflé of curls added an inch or so. He had a lovely, smooth, pink complexion. He smelled April and May. He had very good posture, which was more than she could say for Jean-Christophe.

“Let me buy you a drink to apologize,” Valtyr said, craning his neck to see if she wore a wedding ring.

“First let me check to see if my—if my friend’s—car is still operable.” She rolled back the tambour over the dashboard computer (it hung crooked) and ran some diagnostics. “It’ll have to go to the shop, but I think I can drive it home without it flipping over and bursting into flames.” 

11

 _You should then have accosted her, and with some excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, you should have bang’d the youth into dumbness_ (Twelfth Night, III.2.21-23)

\+ A meet-cute?+ Zen said. +I can’t believe you’d stoop so low.+

+I’m doing what you asked+ Orac said. +If you think you can do better, do it yourself.+

12  
“It’s not your car, right? That’s what you said. I don’t think you stole it.”

“Course not. I’m like you, on my uppers” (a determination based on Valtyr’s off-the-peg tunic and trousers, and base-metal wristchron; Phyllida knew that Melmotte’s elaborate wristchron, with its complex of dials, was made of heavy gold). “The car belongs to…the man I live with. “

“It’s a nice car. Not like my old banger. I was going to say a smashing car but that’s all too true.”

“Oh, Jean-Christophe’s terrifically rich.”

“And terrifically old, I daresay. You don’t belong with him,” Valtyr said. “Young people like us should be together, and be together because they care about each other, not because of…money,” he said, with a degree of disgust that made Phyllida think that he hadn’t had to pay his own bills for very long. 

“What d’you do? I’m an engineering student, and, well, I’ve got a chap who pays the bills.”

“I’m a pilot,” he said, “And a mercenary.”

“Ah,” she said, startled to realize that she sounded like Jean-Christophe. “How’s that working out for you?” 

“I’ve got some awfully good leads,” he said. He leaned forward and dropped his voice. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Professionally,” she said. “Or at least, strongly avocationally.” 

“I was an officer in Space Command. Well, I suppose, officially I still am. But I deserted. There were things that I saw, things I was expected to do…well, you can push a man too far. So now I’m a wanted man,” he said, beaming. 

“Round here, about half the planet is,” Phyllida said. “So it’s like the purloined letter, it’s the best place to hide.” This did not seem to be the response Valtyr was expecting.

They went back to Valtyr’s room, which made Phyllida’s old flatlet seem palatial. 

Valtyr was young and strong and his skin fitted him smoothly and all he ever did with his hair was wash it occasionally. And all of it was still there. He gazed at her as if nothing in the world could be a greater treat than to talk to her. But, she pointed out to herself, he was new in town, he didn’t know many people.

13  
Phyllida went home, went to the kitchen, shooed out a robot, and grilled a fillet steak that she topped with a couple of fried eggs. Then she sat at the breakfast bar, wondering why she felt so peculiar when she didn’t even think that Jean-Christophe was lying when he said he wouldn’t mind. 

She went to the laboratory and checked some code. 

+When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too soon that men betray+ Orac began. 

Phyllida took out the key and went back to work.

14

Phyllida still thought that politics was a mug’s game, but she respected Valtyr for the risks he took for what he believed in. She thought it was a lot more dashing than Jean-Christophe’s racketing about from planet to planet just to make money. 

Eventually, she loved Valtyr for the dangers he had passed. Although if Phyllida had been Desdemona, she would have said, yes, I’m sorry I lost your silly handkerchief, but Cassio’s mistress is awfully clever with her needle, I’ll have her make you another one, you can just stop it out of the housekeeping money. And then she would have lived and Othello’s occupation wouldn’t be gone but he’d grumble a lot and spend his nights at the Officers’ Club. 

Valtyr always asked her to give up Jean-Christophe and throw in her lot with him, and finally she agreed, although she said that she had to tell him in person, it would be too dreadful to do it in a munque. Valtyr insisted on coming along, to make sure she was safe, although Phyllida said that she wasn’t frightened. She stopped short of saying that Jean-Christophe wouldn’t hurt a fly. 

Avon heard the front door open, and Phyllida’s footsteps and somebody else’s he didn’t recognize. He tensed, wondering if he needed one of the guns stashed throughout the house. Phyllida asked the nearest robot if Jean-Christophe was at home and, getting a positive answer, looked in the living room and the kitchen before winding up in the lab. She stood awkwardly in the doorway, with Valtyr behind her, a proprietary arm around her waist. 

“It’s no good,” Phyllida said. “I’m quitting. I’m staying with Valtyr.” She held up her redewriter. “I reversed the transfer of this month’s money. I’ll go and pack my things. I’ll leave the jewelry, of course. ”

“Oh, take it,” Avon said. “It’s not worth anything. Monetarily, anyway,” he said, mostly accurately. “And I don’t need it.” 

“Oh, well, then,” she thought, thinking that she might be able to pop the whole lot for at least a few hundred sotteros. “Valtyr, please go outside and wait. Give us a moment. I promise, I’ll scream if I’m in horrible danger and need to be rescued.” 

“This is ludicrous, Swanny. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Avon said once the door nearly closed.

“I think so. He worships the ground I walk on. Do you?”

“Don’t be stupid. Of course not. I have a great deal of respect and admiration for you as a fellow-scientist. A very good-looking fellow-scientist.”

“Valtyr would be devastated if I left him. And you’re not devastated.”

“And you’re not devastated to leave me, but you ought to stay. The arrangement we have promotes happiness and has fewer risks than the one you’re rushing into. It’s my good fortune that you needed the money to finish school, and running off with this fellow isn’t going to help you with that.”

“I can be sensible later, when I’m not young anymore!”

“I did something even stupider when I was older than you are,” Avon said. “It’s a miracle I’m still around, really. How did you meet him?”

“Remember that time somebody crashed into your car? Well, that was him.”

“That hardly constitutes a recommendation. Even from your viewpoint rather than mine.”

15  
+He wants to slink back with his tail between his legs+ Orac said. +So I suppose he’ll drag me along with him.+

“You needn’t put it that way,” Blake said. “Zen, transmit the coordinates for rendezvous.”

Jenna, yawning and carrying a coffee mug, came onto the flight deck for her shift. “What are you grinning about, Blake?”

16  
+He was keeping a mistress+ Orac said.

“No one likes a tattletale, Orac,” Blake said.

“There’s thousands at Central Security would disagree with you,” Avon said, puffing a little (returning from the Wardrobe Room where he had stashed the contents of two heavy suitcases of clothes custom-tailored on Vettica). 

“I’m sure you’re exaggerating a perfectly innocent situation,” Blake said, remembering the wobbler Jenna had thrown when he kissed Inga, and not only was his cousin one the few remaining unslaughtered members of his family he wasn’t even sleeping with Jenna anyway. 

“No Orac isn’t, it’s quite true, I was. The girl—Phyllida, her name is—is an engineering student, and gave me a good deal of help with some research problems I was working on. Commercial research. I was about to say that it wouldn’t be of any use here, but actually I was working on some concealed communications and undetectable funds transfer applications that might work for your pet revolutionaries. And everything was going along beautifully, until she dropped me, and my chequebook, like a hot ploughshare. She went off with someone else, you see. Dreadfully good-looking, tall, and worst of all, young. The moment I saw him, I thought {{sandwich}} that someone had hauled the portrait out of the attic, and it was me.”

“Like a poker school,” Blake said. “They say that if you look ‘round the table and you can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.” 

“Is dinner still at 1900 hours?”

“Of course,” Blake said. “You were only gone a couple of months, nothing much changed in the interim. Or at least not simple things like that.”

“There’s plenty of time then. I’ll head over to the Battle Computer room,” Avon said. “See if I can sort out those problems with the deflector shields.” 

{{Oh bugger}}, Orac thought. {{I wonder how many of those transmissions he monitored?}}

17  
 _I am ashamed. Does not the stone rebuke me  
For being more stone than it? (Winter’s Tale V.3, 43-44)_

Ten minutes later, Blake came in, carrying a small case of tools. 

“Shift over,” Blake said. “What seems to be the problem?”

“I think that array over there is inadequate to the task, and its failure allowed the damage to the ship to occur. It’s not as though I could consult the ‘Deflector Shields Three Sectors or One Pitched Battle’ service manual, after all. But perhaps instead of simply replacing or doubling the string, I—we—ought to reroute that sensor up in number nineteen; it’s the same data, after all. It isn’t doing much up there and might be contributing to the heat buildup.” Avon opened the lid of the tool case, frowned, and took out a flowmeter. “This might work. What are you doing here, Blake? You never did a hand’s turn before,” Avon said.

“Isn’t that dreadful of me? When you’ve always been so generous about providing advice about *my* work,” Blake said. “But to be serious for a moment, if you’re not going to be playing Teleport Trampoline every week, things have got to change.” 

“I’m here now. For what that’s worth.”

“Well, I’m very glad you’re back. There was no point in ordering you not to leave, all the time you were gone I could practically hear it in my head what you would have said if I had.”

“Ah, well, if you knew what I was going to say, perhaps I needn’t have come back.”

“It’s all right, Avon, it lost something in the translation. Or like reading the script instead of seeing the vizthesp. For the full effect, I need to have you here insulting me in person. I did miss you, you know.”

“The feeling was reciprocal.”

“I’m rather surprised to hear it. It sounds like Vettica could have been custom-made for you,” Blake said. 

“Yes. I had a very nice house—that’s all right, I flipped it for more than I paid for it. Everyone seemed to be up to something. I like that in a planet. But it would be possible to be somewhere other than one of the pest-holes for which you serve as travel agent and still think of you.”

“Did you fall in love with the girl?”

“Oh, good God, no. I liked her, she was—she is--very pretty and she’ll be a good engineer. They’ll have to keep her in the lab, though, she’s far too tactless to be sent to negotiate contracts!”

“Why not just stay there, and get another girl the same way you got that one?” 

“What Swanny made me realize is that there are areas of human life where practicality simply isn’t paramount.” Avon considered continuing the conversation where Blake couldn’t see his face, but sat down on the floor and turned to face Blake, with his arms clasped around his knees. “I realized that with luck, I might be able to hide out there for forty years. Probably not fifty, and certainly not sixty. And I would be safe. Perhaps. But it wouldn’t matter. I’d tell myself that I would forget you, but I never would. All the time I’d either be eaten with worry about what was going to happen to you or devoured with regret about what had happened. So I thought I might as well come back and see if I could affect the outcome, or at any rate share it if I couldn’t.” 

“Just as I’ve always suspected,” Blake said. “Kerr a ses raisons dont le raison ne connait point.” He put an arm around Avon’s shoulders, and kissed him on the forehead. Avon stayed there for a little bit, then broke away before relaxation could be considered a sign of weakness, and re-addressed himself to defensive matters. 

18  
Vila looked over at the flight deck sofa, which now once again contained Avon as well as Blake. They weren’t touching, but their legs were sort of basket-woven so their feet on the floor were reassuringly intermingled. 

“Back like a bad penny, eh, Avon? I see normal levels of stupidity have been restored,” Vila said.

+Modesty would be dishonesty+, Orac said. 

_When the leader is successful, the people say, “We did it all ourselves.”_ —The Art of War

_Your coming back was against all odds,  
But that’s the chance I had to take.  
So take a look at me now._

**Author's Note:**

> Not entirely unlike Pygmalion (naïve young woman must choose between an emotionally unavailable older man and an enthusiastic younger man). I also totally trolled by audience by playing on their fears that any minute it was going to turn into either 50 Shades of Gray or Pretty Woman.


End file.
